ELIZABETH PEYTON | Haircut (Ben & Spencer)

signed, titled and dated SEPT 2002 on the reverse

Sadie Coles HQ, London
Acquired from the above by Marc Jacobs

London, Royal Academy of Art, The Galleries Show - Contemporary Art in London, September - October 2002
New York, New Museum; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center; London, Whitechapel Gallery; Maastricht, Bonnefantenmuseum, Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, October 2008 - March 2010, p. 164, illustrated in colour

Elizabeth Peyton, Rizzoli, New York, 2005, p. 196, illustrated in colour

This work is in very good condition. Some light dust fibres have settled on the surface. Close inspection reveals some tiny wear to the lower edge, approximately 5 cm from the left corner. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Haircut (Ben and Spencer) is a quintessential Peyton portrait featuring two oft-depicted characters within the artist’s oeuvre. By endowing her subjects with androgynous qualities, Peyton shuns the archaic gender system of machoism and toughness, and chooses instead to draw out the feminine beauty and tenderness of her sitters. This is further enhanced by her use of a non-perspectival space, framing her subjects in an angled and photographic perspective, thereby rendering them in dramatic and reflective poses. In the process, she distances her sitters from the pressure of masculine virility, instead viewing them with a compassionate affection that awakens their vulnerability. Touted as one of the most influential artists in the field of contemporary figurative painting, Elizabeth Peyton is celebrated for reanimating and democratising 19^th Century traditions of portraiture by intimately depicting present-day figures with her signature romanticised realism. Working at a time when figurative painting had been declared dead, Peyton is praised for reinvigorating portraiture in a contemporary form, simultaneously portraying her subjects with an air close to veneration whilst at the same time imbuing them with a familiarity that resonates with a strong romantic devotion. By diminishing the traditional distance of portraiture, Peyton seeks instead to enhance the inner vulnerabilities of her sitters through lush and expressive brushwork. Armed with a unique palette, Peyton’s approach to beauty balances illusion and reality with a psychological intimacy that unearths the inner qualities of her protagonists. As she immerses the viewer into her pictorial code, Peyton skilfully invents a multisensorial aesthetic that combines the classicism of the Romantic era with contemporary innovation, making her one of the most captivating artists of her generation.